Tatiana Potapova was having a rough day at work.
She'd nicked her Achilles tendon shaving, except one does not nick the Achilles tendon so much as gash the Achilles tendon. Every time she slid the back of her leg against the pole, she managed to catch the scab on that sharp little imperfection about halfway down, and the gash would bleed anew.
On top of that, Denis was starting up again, bugging her to go out, but Tatiana had a strict policy of not dating the bouncers at the club. One too many of them had forgotten one too many times that she wasn't an unruly drunk who needed to be manhandled on out the door.
But that's not why she was having a rough day at work.
She was having a rough day at work because her promised U.S. $45,000 and little flat in Sacramento was disappearing before her eyes. Also she expected to be murdered by the end of the night.
"I just had an interesting visit in the alley" was how she'd been greeted in the communal dressing room two hours earlier.
She gasped. "Боже мой, you scared me! How did you get in here?" she'd asked in her heavily accented English. Conversing in English was the only way to keep their discussion private.
"Ana came to see me," said the cross-armed man leaning on the vanity in Tatiana's mirror station, ignoring her question.
Tatiana swallowed hard, hoping he wouldn't notice. "About what?"
"Oh, Tatiana, let's not do this, shall we? You know about what."
She shifted her feet. "Alex, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say anything. I just – "
"You just what?" Alex, aka Michael Westen, asked. "You just thought Don't tell anybody about this meant Tell Ana about this?"
"No, Alex, please; I can explain."
"I'm all ears."
"Her сутенер is beating her again. Сутенер, that's, em, that's . . . " She trailed off, searching for the word.
"Pimp."
"Yes, pimp. Her pimp make her take some drugs. He take all her money. She is afraid he will kill her. She is my best friend. I want her come with me. Share the money and live in my flat in California. She is so frightened. I give her something to look forward to. A reason to live. That's all, Alex. I swear. You don't have to give her anything extra. She will share with me."
"Sorry to disappoint you, Tatiana, but your best friend is now blackmailing you and the United States government."
Tatiana's mouth opened a little. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about she wants $200,000 or else she's going to tell Vlad that you're supposed to rub RFID trackers in his hair while you're giving him a lap dance."
She put her hand to her mouth and let out a primal, scared breath. "Боже мой!" She started to cry. "Oh god, Alex, what are you going to do? You will pay her, yes? You have to. You have to. Otherwise Vlad will kill me."
"Tatiana, do you know what I had to do to get your 45,000? Super Bowl tickets. I have to buy Kenny from Financial Affairs two tickets to the Super Bowl so he and his brother can go see their beloved Packers get their asses handed to them by the Broncos. I'll be lucky if I only pay a thousand bucks apiece. For 200,000, he's going to want a couple of my organs, and frankly I don't care about you that much."
Tatiana was sobbing by this point. "Alex, please, you have to help me."
"You know you are now officially considered an unreliable asset? You know what means? Means I can do anything necessary to salvage the operation, which includes killing you and Ana."
Sob, sob, sob. Now shaking.
Michael rolled his eyes and stood up to stabilize her. "I'm not going to kill you," he said, not all that reassuringly, as he put his hands on her shoulders. "You're catching me on a good day, Tatiana. You're an idiot, but you had good intentions. You remind me of my sister." Sister meant brother.
"What about Ana? Are you going to kill her?" Tatiana asked, horrified.
"No, I'm not going to kill her, either. She's not an idiot and she doesn't have good intentions, but there's a shitload more paperwork if I kill her than if I solve the problem another way."
Tatiana exhaled slowly as she worked to stop crying.
"So this is what you're going to do. You, Tatiana, are going to go to work, and you're going to do exactly what we practiced. You're going to find Bayubin. You are going to give him a lap dance. You are going to pull the vial from your hair when you take your clip out. You are going to snap the vial open in your palm. You are going to rub your hands through his hair. You are going to finish the lap dance. You are going to go back to the stage. You are going to dance the rest of your shift. And you're going to keep your goddamn mouth shut."
She nodded, quickly and continuously. "Yes. I will do all that. Yes. But what are you going to do about Ana?"
"I'm going to make her a counter offer."
"All right, this is good enough to start," Michael said forty minutes later, thumbing through a file. "Keep going on the rest. I'm going to go talk to our new friend." He tucked the file in his back waistband, got out of the surveillance van, and walked four blocks in the blowing snow to a dimly lit bar. He entered and found her sitting at a small table in the back corner.
"It's snowing," he announced, dumping his snow-covered fur hat and wool coat on her purse, which she'd rested on one of the chairs. "I don't like snow, Ana. Makes me cranky." He rubbed his goatee roughly, getting the little frozen bits out.
"You have my money?" she asked.
"I do, as a matter of fact." He pulled a manila envelope from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. "Anywhere you have to wear two coats is uncivilized. You should think about moving," he said as he handed her the envelope.
She took it and furrowed her brow. "This feels very small." She opened it and pulled out ten one-hundred dollar bills. "Ten thousand dollars? Are you a fool?"
"No, but you are, Ana, because ten times a hundred is one thousand, not ten thousand."
"A thousand?" she screech-whispered. "I said two hundred thousand."
"Well, now, it's not all bad. I'm giving you nine more thousand, just not in cash. So then you'll have ten thousand." He leaned in. "You don't have ten thousand now," he whispered.
"You bastard. All right, so, I will tell Vlad, then. He will kill Tatiana. I tell him to kill you, too."
"That's exactly what I would do if I were you or him," he agreed. "Smart."
She huffed and started to stand up.
"But you should look at this first." He pulled the file from his back and flopped it on the table.
Ana froze. "What is this?"
"Ana, why would you ask What is this? right after I told you to look at this? That's why I told you to look at this. So you'd know what this is."
She sat down and opened the green, paperboard folder. "What is this?" she repeated.
"Right, now it's okay to ask What is this?, because you've looked at it and you don't understand. But asking first – that's just lazy. No matter. To answer your question, that's what's called a receipt of deposit. Banks use that to confirm they've received a direct deposit. You know what a direct deposit is, right?"
Ana stared at him.
"Hey, listen, it's okay that you don't know. You've probably never had a reason to know. So, a direct deposit basically eliminates the need for – "
"I know what is direct deposit," she hissed. "Why it has my name?"
"Because your account got a direct deposit of $9,000."
"What account? I don't have account."
"Sure you do. I opened one for you. It comes with an ATM card, but I forgot it. I'll give it to you next time."
Again she stared.
"You wondering why I opened an account for you? Fair question. I did it because the U.S. government prefers to pay its spies by direct deposit when possible. It's safer for us that way. That way we know it made it to the spy. You hand a hundred grand in cash to some agent to give to the spy, who knows if it'll ever make it to the spy. Personally, I say that shows a great deal of distrust by my government. I mean, we're working for peanuts and we routinely put our lives on the line. A little trust wouldn't be out of line."
"I am not American spy!" she whispered fiercely.
"Of course you are. That's why they paid you. See right there? Department of the Treasury of the United States. That's pretty official, Ana. My paychecks don't look that official. 'Course, I don't work for anyone directly. That may explain the difference.
"So anyway, we've got an account all set up for you. You'll have an ATM card, like I said. Sorry again for forgetting it. And the bank will mail you all the paperwork you need to pay your U.S. taxes. Nice, huh? All you have to do is send a copy of it in to Moscow so they can make sure to credit you properly for that on your Russian taxes. You don't want to be double taxed on this ten grand, right?" He laughed. "Actually, to tell you the truth, you don't even have to send it to Moscow. They'll know in about twelve hours. Once someone's in the office to sign for the package my associate will send them unless I instruct him not to." His smile disappeared, and he looked at Ana with laser focus.
"What are you doing?" she whispered with tears in her eyes.
"I'm blackmailing effectively. Your attempt at blackmail was ineffective, Ana. What happens if you make good on your threats? Vlad will know we want to follow him. Tatiana may die." He shrugged. "Or not. You never know." He returned to his scary, focused face. "I'm fine with any of that. I'll find another Vlad, and at the moment Tatiana's not on my Christmas card list. What happens if I make good on my threats? What happens, Ana?" He waited for a moment. "The KGB will kill you once they get bored torturing you. That's what happens."
Ana was silent.
"So here's what happens instead. You are getting $10,000 for nothing more than being a pain in my ass. And you're lucky, Ana, because it turns out I am going to give you the other nine in cash. You still have the nine grand in your account, so officially you have $19,000, but I wouldn't touch it if I were you. Just think of it as forbidden fruit. You so much as breathe on it, that paperwork I mentioned finds its way to the KGB. You are not going to say anything to Vlad. You are not going to say anything to anybody. You just quit your job. You are going to move. I don't care where as long as it's at least 500 kilometers away from here. I'll give you 48 hours to get out of town. At 48 hours and one second, I let the KBG know about the surveillance equipment all over your apartment."
"Мудак!" she yelled.
He scoffed. "You think calling me an asshole is going to help your case? Just for that, now it's 36 hours." He stood up and started putting his coat and hat back on. "You know, I might have been more forgiving if you'd chosen to do this in July. I don't like snow."
John Baer closed the three-ring, black binder with a grin. He'd heard a little bit about this Michael Westen over the last few years, but he'd never had the opportunity to review one of his operations. Until today. And what a pleasure it had been.
Westen's report about Tatiana Potapova and Ana Vanzina and Vladimir Bayubin was so detailed that Baer could picture Tatiana's eye shadow. Hear Ana's lisp. Smell Vlad's overpowering cologne. The rest of his reports for Operation Bunny Hop were equally thorough. Operation Bunny Hop was the code name for the CIA's mission to capture Pyotr Chechik. The name Pyotr made Michael think of Peter Rabbit.
And they'd caught the bunny. Bayubin led them to Vasin, Vasin led them to Kozar, Kozar led them to Chechik, and Chechik was now serving ten years in prison for war crimes. Chechik was a huge get. The Bunny Hop team had been enjoying the CIA's equivalent of a ticker tape parade, which is silence accompanied by a head nod to signify a job well done.
A mid-level manager in the Directorate of Support's security section, Baer's job was to vet existing CIA personnel for placement in sensitive positions. As a result, he had effectively unfettered access to the agency's best and brightest. Michael Westen topped that list today.
Baer picked up the phone and dialed quickly, from muscle memory. "Yes, Mr. Fullerton. John Baer in Support Directorate. We're in our annual review for clearance promotions. I need to set up some psych evals for the candidates. . . . Right. . . . Yeah, we'll have three or four in the next week, but for now I've just got one to get on the books. . . His name is Michael Westen. . . . No, W-E-S-T-E-N, not O-N. . . . Right. . . . Right. So you'll have your assistant get in touch with him to schedule the appointment? . . . Okay, good. Look forward to hearing from you."
Of course there was no appointment to schedule. That was Baer's way of telling Fullerton to go learn everything there was to learn about Michael Westen.
Baer had a defined role in his partnership with Anson Fullerton, and honestly he did the lion's share of the work. He found the people. Monitored them. Decided assignments. Allocated resources. Handled personnel problems. All Anson had to do was read some files.
That's why Anson had nicknamed him Management.